How’s that for an attention-grabbing headline? Of course, Chris Zaldain is not back home in California fishing on one of his favorite lakes. Yet he compares Cayuga Lake to it. And curiosity led him to Google, which helped connect the dots to his comparison to the Northern California trophy bass fishery.
“I kept seeing dense balls of baitfish on the Humminbird Solix, but didn’t know what they were,” he said.
The Google search revealed baitfish that resemble alewife and rainbow smelt and both inhabit Cayuga. Either way, Zaldain matched his soft plastic Megabass imitators to the size and shape of the baitfish.
On Clear Lake, the forage is hitch, silverside minnows, and threadfin shad. No matter what type of baitfish the similarities of where the bait school is how Zaldain drew the comparison between the lakes.
“Here, and there, I search for dense schools of baitfish relating to prominent underwater structure,” he said. “That’s where the bass stage and wait for the bait to come past.”